They came into the room with Apollo and painted the walls a different shade of red. They eyed the bed. Apollo pushed them to the bathroom. The walk was small, the room could not have been wider than a five-second dash to the opposite end.

And there, they found the plastic sheets of the shower curtains and wrapped them around his wounds. Dion looked behind him, the trail of blood leading from the door to the restroom. Aenea had the idea to close the door at last.

"Jesus, you forgot me already," Thaddeus said, coming in, glassed fixed on his bed-ridden head. Half of his hair was pushed along like a giant wall ran on his left ear.

It was a late night. Late enough that the only place they could find a bed was among those dismal corners, a shitty motel in some god awful corner, where the hookers were working next door with their false moans and wry laughs. The men sounded ached and combined with Apollo's thrashing screams, it all seemed like a Capella of pain.

"I can handle myself," Apollo tried to say, the blood pooled on his lower jaw and he spat it out.

"I don't know how you're still alive," Dion said.

"I was never good at much, especially dying." Apollo laughed.

"If you have enough time to talk, you should have enough time to lay down and sleep."

"Sleeps not going to help him," Thaddeus said. "At the poor rate of his regeneration, I'm going to guess he's short calories. He probably hasn't been eating well these past few days. If at all. You're going to have to feed him in the morning. He'll be grazing all day too, considering his wounds."

"I offered him a philosopher's stone..." Dion said, in his low voice. His eyes narrowed.

"And he didn't take it, that's good. I don't know his particular condition but he doesn't seem well enough for that kind of stimulus. Actually, don't feed him anything with Arcana." Thaddeus said. "It's better he recovers naturally, with sleep and food. Let him rest a couple days, he can make it."

"What about me?" Aenea said from the corner. Her voice sounded no louder than a whisper, but it cut through Dion like a knife. She was here. The woman who for all intents and purposes, was the sole cause for their pain. Aenea. Bleeding from her arm with nothing more to her senses but the quick eyeing and nervous shaking iris. Aenea, who rubbed both her shoulders and crossed her arms and stared left and right like a schizophrenic surveillance camera. "What happens to me? This hasn't stopped hurting and I've got this weird feeling. An itch maybe, it's in my stomach and it's growing out."

Apollo had stopped moving with for a brief moment frightened Dion, who turned to feel his pulse. He was asleep. Just asleep, thank god.

He lay on his side in the tub. His head against the faucet, the blood pooling into the drainage, clogging it with clumps of flesh. His body was extraditing the shrapnel lodged in his stomach.

"What about you, Aenea?" Dion asked. "I'm the one with questions here."

"I mean...what's happening to me?" Aenea asked. She pointed a finger to Thaddeus and to Dion. "You've all got a better idea than me on what's happening so I want to know. What's gone on with me? And who are you?" She pointed to Thaddeus again, who looked around.

"Who, me?"

"Yes, you."

"I'll have you know that I'm the greatest minds amongst the Hospitallers. You won't find a more brilliant philosopher, doctor, scientist, poet-"

"He's the guy who gives us our weapons." Dion said. "What else do you want to know, witch?"

"Just that. What does it mean to be a witch?"

"Unholiness." Dion said. "Unreliable, a killing machine in waiting. Whose unreserved and irresponsible actions have led to our near-deaths not once but twice."

"You're tangled in a big mess, Aenea," Thaddeus extended his hand out. Aenea dismissed it, not even with a slap or a nod but dispassionate scowl. She kept her eyes on Dion, a green gleam in them like something brewing. A potion, a spell. Something vile and something not even Aenea was aware of. But the glow was obvious, especially in the darkness.

"You're acting as if I'm conscious of all this shit," she said. "I'm in just a big confused mess as the rest of you. Don't act like I asked for any of this, don't think that I orchestrated the attacks or hired you two defend me from them."

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

"I know. That's why you're so unreliable. You're a novice. You have arcana, some. God knows what it'll manifest as," He said. "And you came here expecting a funeral and some concessions, only to enter the arena."

"Arena?" She looked down at her fumbling hands.

"Can't you tell? It seems obvious now that Apollo is half dead and your sister revealed." Dion said. "It seems like it started with your dad too. You're all killing each other. To what end? Who knows."

"Arena? Can anyone in this damn place make any god damn sense? Speak in simpler terms, please." Her arms extended out and slapped her knees, her face came forward and rested itself face down on her lap. The arcana traveled through her neck, green. Such that she had a mild glow, like radiation trying to be subdued.

"You're going to have to figure things out. I just know you're cursed, by whom? Who knows." Dion said.

Thaddeus rose his finger.

"Well, who am I to...chime in." They all faced him, he smiled. It was a weak smile. "But I believe that's Mammon's curse? Right?" He was grinning now, towards Aenea who carried her discomfort obviously as a wide frown."A-a-and." He said. "I'm sure this curse comes with a reward. All burdens do. Whatever that is, though, I don't know."

"It's not just a prize," Aenea looked down. "It's the damn casino along with it."

"Competition? Bloodbath, more like it." Dion said. "And we're fighting people better versed, well equipped and well coordinated. This is not a fair fight, not by any stretch. At least you have u-"

Her face went cold. Her cheeks drained of color. She sat on a chair next to the window, looking out the small gaps between the window blinds. She looked segmented with the moonlight split and hitting her. Cut into pieces.

Dion extended coughed, trying to speak, only to croak, to shush.

Periodically she would look out, though most of the time she bandaged herself. And when the Thaddeus tried to approach her, she'd glare at him. Though it wasn't anger. More so, a reaction. For her face eased up when she saw his.

She looked shook.

It was beginning to dawn on her, this whole picture of a family of witches and her own role in it. The details were like bombs in her synapses, waiting to explode or already in the midst of it. Each thought, each passing memory, all evidence and rumor pieced together, strange new and old point, amassing in the revelation; she was a witch, alone and without hope. Now coming into a world of demons, of magic, of a summons and orderly obedience to a demon.

"So it's really like this, then?" Aenea asked with deliberation in her voice. Slow, steady. It sounded like mumbling."I've been signed up for a tournament, a game, where I don't even know the prize. But I sure know the cost, don't I?"

"Yeah,"

"And that magic stuff? She was going through walls. And the monsters - That's all just natural to you, isn't it?" Her breath sounded faint.

"Yes," Dion said. With calm. With a measured tone.

"So I'm the only one out of the loop then? You don't even seem concerned. It seems like another day to you."

"I've been in this trade for a while and considering the things I've seen and done...no, none of this is strange. It's sure scary, but not strange." He said.

"You can't truly be afraid until you experience the lack of knowledge. Like I am." He rubbed her feet and then, her ankle. It stung and the pain showed, the wide frown across her face. "You can't understand someone who lived her whole life thinking this was all make-believe and fairy tail, living and surviving for my mom. Trying to struggle, only to have it threatened." She laughed. "By dad...By dad! He's taking it from me, isn't he? All of it. All the things I worked so hard for without him and here he's gone, stomping on my sand castle, telling me to play in the damn ocean. I was having fun. I was doing things. I felt good. But now? Now I'm stuck in a new world with burdens I can't even understand, because the instruments to measure them are foreign to me too."

"I'm sorry, but you're going to have to adjust and we can help you." He said. "We can educate you on your mark, on your capabilities - if you have any - and on your new role in this fight."

"I don't want to hear it." She leaned back. "Not now."

She snapped at Thaddeus

"Can you get me a drink?" She asked. He looked excited, almost, Thaddeus. He ran to the little mini-fridge in the corner of the room.

It was as if the details of the room were finally coming together for Dion, as if calm had finally given him perspective. For every piece of furniture was beginning to appear in his periphery. The flower-pattern carpet, the chairs by the sides of beds. The bibles atop the tables. A bathroom with closed windows. Windows with closed binds. Wind, howling. A cross, lopsided, right above Dion who was right in front of the small twenty four inch TV.

The light above burned a hole through Dion. With the fan circling at a slow pace, looking above, he felt like a fly caught in the wind tunnel. Simply circling, skirting the edge, being sucked into the vortex.

The mini fridge emitted a low sound. Less than a hum. The AC was turned on. When? He didn't know.

"We're going to be staying here for a while." Apollo spat out from the bathroom. They all turned to face him. He didn't even bother to move from his side, with his face leaned against the faucet. He laid there, simply, in tranquil stillness. His voice groggy and strained. But that was his natural voice too, so it was hard to tell if he was in pain or not, for he sounded the same as usual; pissed, raspy, low, slow.

Maybe he was always in pain.

"It’s bad enough to be in a meth-house looking motel," He said, fixing his posture just a bit to straighten out. "But here I am also listening to two idiots worry and argue over nothing they can do or think about. I’m about to slit my own throat.”

He sniffed.

“So unless you want to clean an even bigger mess, please, shut the fuck up and let me sleep."

They looked at him with slacked jaws. The blood and the small shrapnel coming out of his body, the plastic curtains wrapped around him like a bloody toga.

They gave one hard look at his distressed eyes and the bags they carried and then they shut up.